Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Last Of Nora Roberts For a While

I'm glad Ms. Roberts has enjoyed setting up her very own bed and breakfast. From descriptions, I think it might be a place I'd like to go.

The Next Always celebrates the journey of creating a bed and breakfast. Too much. We get more information about building and decorating than we do about the characters. While growing emotions between the couple are there, there is none of La Nora's usual build up of characters. It feels like the characters are secondary to the B&B.

I forced myself to read the first 3rd of the book and just gave up.

Additionally, I don't mind if characters swear. It is a good way to further define the character. In this book, the swearing was jarring and distracting. The verbage is unlike any I've seen in previous books by La Nora. It was almost as if she was saying "hey, builders swear a lot, just hear them!" Hey, I've been around builders and contractors of various kinds. This kind of verbage is used. It has a context. In the book, context was explained but not shown. Jarring and distracting.

I so wanted to like this series but found myself caring so little about the characters that I gave up.

Thankfully, I borrowed the book from the library. Here's hoping La Nora does better in her next standalone or trilogy. I'm not investing time in this trilogy.

Would I recommend this to a reader of Contemporary Romance? No

Would I recommend this to a romance reader who dreams of setting up her own B&B? Yes

Would I recommend this to a man in a bear suit? No. He's a bear. Indoor housing would not be of interest to him.

Anne's starred items

About Me

When I started this, I was just a lowly librarian in Arizona trying to make either sense or nonsense of life.
Now I'm an overweight, middle-aged, retired white lady from Iowa still trying to make either sense of nonsense of life.